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With just a handful of cash and a whole lot of sweat, Rick Santorum is successfully competing against a candidate with a dapper brand and piles of money -- sounds like the political version of a scrappy startup to me.

Forget the horse race. Here are four lessons in entrepreneurship from Rick Santorum:

1.)Hustle Beats Money

The politics: Without the cushy budget enjoyed by his opponents,Rick Santorum won Iowa by hopping in a pickup truck and visiting every single county in the state.

The lesson: In lieu of cash, engage your customers feverishly.

If you're small and nimble, get authentic and personal. The mere reassurance that someone behind the brand - someone with a name and family - gives a damn about individual customers is enough to purchase an enormous amount of goodwill. Added bonus: there's no better way to learn about your business and your market. That’s why startup CEOs at web companies should personally email the first 1000 peoplewho sign up for their site.

When it came time to choose, voters in Iowa picked the guy who paid attention. When it comes time to buy, customers will do the same.

2.)Down Doesn’t Mean Out

The politics: Virtually no one took the Santorum campaign seriously until the Iowa win. And after the Iowa glow wore off, the media left him for dead right up until his three-state sweep – in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado - on February 7th.

The lesson: You will be ignored and ridiculed in that order. Focus on the long game.

Almost every startup has been dismissed and mocked at some point in its life cycle. Jeff Ready, CEO of Scale Computing, visited 50 banks before he could convince someone to give him a loan for his first business. People laughed at Intuit CEO Scott Cook when he claimed that businesses would one day manage their finances with software. Even Apple limped through the 90s before becoming the largest company in the world.

Your job as an entrepreneur is to see the future more clearly than the pack. Don’t be discouraged when they don’t get it.